Parents Resist Demolition of Community Library

“It’s disgusting,” said a Whittier mother of the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) latest attempt to demolish the community center and library known as “La Casita.” Last fall, the Whittier parents kept the building open with a heroic and grueling 43-day sit-in. After following all CPS stipulations on how to keep the center open, La Casita parents were surprised when demolition workers showed up with permits. This shows that no matter how hard workers fight, the bosses will lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. Regardless, the parents quickly jumped into action to stop the CPS demolition.

The next day, with the demolition crew scheduled to arrive at 6 AM., the Whittier parents, with support from the community, mobilized 60 workers, teachers and students to begin a new sit-in. Only one demolition worker showed up at 6:30 AM, scouting the area to check on the protest. A PLP member and a La Casita mother attempted to win this worker’s support. He refused. With true working-class solidarity, the Whittier mother gave the worker her phone number, saying that while the bosses aren’t coming for your neighborhood now, they will be soon, and we can help.

At 7:45 AM, the Chicago KKKops blocked off all roads leading into La Casita. In response to this fascist attack, PLP members and allies went door-to-door in the neighborhood informing residents about the situation, trying to get them involved in the fight-back. This made many sit-in’ers feel more confident that no matter what CPS and the KKKops did, we would respond.

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Client-Worker Unity Vital Step Towards Revolution

East Orange, NJ, July 12 — “Can’t you see what they are doing to us? Listen to these people we need to start fighting back,” yelled an angry black worker standing in line to collect his monthly welfare check.  He was one of hundreds exposed to PLP’s ideas as we organized over 30 students and workers to rally in front of the Essex County Development Center. 

Racist Cutbacks and Unemployment

As the ruling class continues to spend more money on imperialist wars across the globe, the working class is facing more and more cuts.   A recent study by Brown University put the cost of  “post 9/11” wars at around $4 trillion.^[1]  Meanwhile 300 General Assistance (GA) clients lost their Emergency Assistance benefits.  Thousands had their “benefits” suspended without notice (while still eligible) pending state review. Even those that do get GA get only $140 a month!

While the bosses talk about unemployment being at 9.5% in NJ, that number is at least doubled for the mostly black and Latino workers of Essex County.  In Newark it is over 20%.  This is why PLP calls it racist unemployment.  While it hurts all workers, it is always worse for black, latin and immigrant workers.

Meanwhile, the Democrat controlled State Legislature voted to force thousands of public employees to pay huge increases in their pension and health care coverage contributions. 

While the workers and their clients real interests are to unite against the bosses’ tremendous attacks, many are motivated by a lack of class-consciousness and see the person on the other side of the glass as the enemy rather than the bosses who profit.  This is not a coincidence.  The capitalists spend billions promoting racist, anti-working class ideology so that workers don’t see who their real allies are. 

Workers welcome CHALLENGE and PLP

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PLP Builds Class Consciousness Call for Strike to Battle D.C. Bosses, Union Hacks

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The battle against the Metro transit bosses and sellout union leaders is heating up.  PLP members at Metro used a union-called town hall meeting for workers and riders “to get input” to expose the sellouts and have radical conversations with fellow workers about the need for communist revolution.

 Party members testified that a strike at Metro would help all D.C. area workers, including Metro riders, resist today’s racist offensive against workers. Those statements from both Metro workers and riders got the loudest applause of the meeting, and helped build an attitude of rebellion that opens the door for building the PLP at Metro and throughout the community.

Although support for a strike to resolve our contract dispute is wide spread among riders and drivers, the union leadership is strongly opposed to any work action by members of ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 689.

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Hospital Workers’ Class Hatred Rages vs. Racist, Sexist Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, NY, June 26 — “What do we want?! BENEFITS! If we don’t get it? SHUT’EM DOWN!”

Hundreds of black and Latino hospital workers militantly chanted, sang and danced in a picket line surrounding Brookdale Hospital CEO Bruce Flanz’s house in this rich, mostly white town, about an hour north of the hospital’s site in the Bronx. The picket was organized by Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a local representing over 260,000 mostly black and Latino hospital and home healthcare workers in New York City. The workers were responding to Brookdale’s violation of its labor contract, which has forced the 3,500 hospital workers onto a more expensive health insurance plan in a racist, sexist campaign to break worker militancy and, ultimately, decertify 1199.

When Progressive Labor Party members spoke with Brookdale workers as they arrived to board the buses that morning, we met with very positive reactions. Almost every worker took a CHALLENGE, and we came away with more than a half dozen contacts. Since then we have followed up with them to plan meetings. As some of our new friends later told us, several Brookdale workers took stacks of papers on the buses with them, distributed them all, and held discussions about the Brookdale article (CHALLENGE 6/6) on the bus trip there and back.

The picket around the CEO’s house was highly militant. At the sight of the CEO’s sprawling house, the racist contrast between the living conditions of Brookdale workers and the bosses was blatantly obvious. One disgusted worker, her young daughter with her, yelled, “We’re fighting just for this [contract] when these people live like this?” Another woman worker began spreading a chant to burn down the boss’s house, before being discouraged by union marshals. The loudest and most popular chant, quoted at the top, was a call-and-response for the hospital to shut down.

Scabs Watch Out!

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IMF, FBI Circuses Try to Mislead Workers into Rulers’ Wars

To combat a growing host of global warring enemies, U.S. rulers increasingly require loyalty, both from international allies and from the masses at home. This wartime need underlies the rotating episodes of two ongoing “true-crime” sagas: the cases of Dominique Strauss-Khan, the ousted head of the International Monetary Fund, and Whitey Bulger, the Boston gangster recently captured after 16 years on the lam.

In both cases, the capitalist media boasted of “proof” that U.S. courts protect the downtrodden from the mighty and inexorably punish the guilty. But make no mistake. The bosses aren’t merely distracting workers with media circuses here. These cases have implications far worse than these two criminals’ misdeeds.

Manhattan D.A. Vance Uses Strauss-Khan Assault to Serve U.S. Imperialism’s Class Interests

On May 14, IMF boss Strauss-Khan was arrested for sexually assaulting a New York hotel housekeeping worker, a story that grabbed headlines around the world.

But on July 1, New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. declared there were “too many inconsistencies” in the hotel worker’s testimony. Saying he now “had no case” against Strauss-Kahn, Vance freed him from house arrest and returned his bail money.

But Vance’s flip-flopping had accomplished U.S. rulers’ goal: It forced Strauss-Kahn’s resignation as head of the IMF. Why? Strauss-Kahn’s original sin was pushing for a new currency to replace the dollar as the IMF instrument for indebting poor nations. This proposed “basket money,” originally designed as a combination of the dollar, the British pound, the euro, and the Japanese yen, would now expand to include China’s yuan. Beyond devaluing the U.S. dollar (by enabling countries to buy the new currency instead of U.S. Treasury bonds) and thereby threatening the dominance of the U.S. ruling class, the new currency would also enhance the influence of China, the United States’ chief economic rival.

Vance is no Johnny-come-lately. He’s a chip off the old, imperialist block; his father, Cyrus Vance, Sr., was the Secretary of State who helped President Jimmy Carter draft the “Carter Doctrine” in 1980. This policy declared Mideast energy a “vital U.S. interest” to be defended by military force, laying the groundwork for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While there’s no evidence that Strauss-Kahn was a victim of a sting, his inability to keep his pants up — following a long line of similar “indiscretions” — was a gift that U.S. bosses used to eject him from the IMF, check his assaults on the U.S. dollar, and damage his chances to become the next president of France.

French President Sarkozy Cozies to U.S. War-makers, Arms Libya Rebels Following Strauss-Kahn Flap

Now U.S. rulers have sharpened their focus on “coalition-building.” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner blessed the choice of French economist Christine Lagarde, a member of Sarkozy’s pro-U.S. Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP), to run the IMF. Lagarde had for years headed the law firm of Baker & McKenzie, a leading U.S. imperialist force in the Middle East and North Africa.

Steve Dunaway, of the Exxon Mobil/JP Morgan Chase-controlled Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think-tank, spelled out Lagarde’s latest pro-U.S. duties: “She has to demonstrate that the IMF will not automatically rubberstamp European decisions and be a convenient piggy bank to help Europe finance the debt crisis in some euro-area countries” (CFR website, 6/29/11). Sarkozy called the selection of this U.S. stooge “a victory for France.”

Immediately following Lagarde’s coronation, Sarkozy began flying arms to the anti-Qaddafi, U.S.-leaning Libyan rebels. These shipments go beyond the UN’s resolution on Libya but delight Obama and the Pentagon.

Freeing Strauss-Kahn supposedly humiliated Vance and allowed French rulers to save face in the eyes of the world. No longer would superpower U.S. bosses hold the 2012 French presidential elections hostage. But despite having to reverse himself, Vance’s push for a premature indictment will help war-bent U.S. imperialists at the French polls. It has clearly weakened the Socialist Party’s challenge to Sarkozy, whoever their candidate may be. “Strauss-Kahn’s possible return has thrown the Socialist party’s primary race into disarray” (Guardian, UK, 7/3/11).

The critical back story is that Strauss-Kahn’s Socialists oppose French integration into NATO’s U.S.-dominated military command. Incumbent president Sarkozy had rejoined this coalition in 2009, also to the delight of Obama and the Pentagon. By arresting Strauss-Kahn and then releasing him, DA Vance did maximum damage to Sarkozy’s Socialist Party adversaries without making Strauss-Kahn a martyr, which might have drawn anti-U.S. (and anti-Sarkozy) forces out to vote.

What gets lost amid the sensational headlines is how Strauss-Kahn’s sexism exemplifies the pervasive attacks on women under this system.  The IMF is a huge force for the oppression of working-class women worldwide; women are doubly affected by the austerity measures forced upon the most exploited countries. These women are super-exploited by the lowest incomes and murderous medical “care.” They are victimized by mass rapes in imperialist-inspired wars over diamonds in central Africa.

Regardless of Strauss-Kahn’s future, or which ruling-class faction calls the tune at the IMF, this is the hard law of capitalism: maximum exploitation for maximum profit.

To Energize Patriotic Police State: Rulers Dump Racist Thug Bulger, FBI ‘Agent’

While the Strauss-Kahn circus has played out on a worldwide stage, U.S. rulers have pitched the Bulger drama to a domestic audience. On June 22, the FBI at long last collared fugitive gangster and “rogue” FBI collaborator Whitey Bulger. Bulger had served as an FBI informant and was protected by his handlers even as he was accused of 19 murders, a fact that has given this police-state agency a black eye for two decades.

On one level, the hype over Whitey’s capture forms part of a ruling-class effort to publicly rehabilitate the bungling, corrupt FBI and win greater support for the burgeoning wartime U.S. police state.

On a deeper level, busting Bulger represents a profound shift from the ideology of the 1970s. While U.S. capitalists still rely on racist big-city police departments, and still protect KKK-Nazi groups to mislead white workers, they’ve needed to shift their emphasis from locally-oriented gutter racism to massive, patriotic, national racism and global genocide, often under the leadership of black politicians like Obama and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

Whitey and his “legit” politician brother, Billy, reached the height of their power at the end of the Vietnam War era. As part of a Defense Department shutdown after the war, the main Rockefeller-led liberal bosses wiped out thousands of better-paying jobs in redundant shipyards in South Boston, Charlestown, East Boston, and Quincy.

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Teachers, Students Give Out Marks: A+ for PLP’ers Under Attack; ‘F’ for Racist Principal

BROOKLYN, N.Y., July 1 — ”I feel like I am back in my country under the dictatorship of Noriega.” So spoke one Panamian-born Clara Barton High School staff member after hearing that some teachers would be “excessed” from the school (and moved to another building) after a year of sharp struggle. One of them has been an outspoken fighter in the school and a champion of student rights. It’s no surprise that the administration has been scheming how to discipline or get rid of outstanding teachers who have challenged the racist regime of Principal Forman.

This struggle began in 2007, when several Clara Barton teachers volunteered to accompany students to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After PLP teachers organized a few very successful trips with parent support, the teachers involved received “warning letters” in their files. The school community was outraged when the principal and assistant principal of security attacked us for the trip.

We realized then that only a racist could oppose our efforts to respond to the genocide that was taking place in New Orleans. As one parent involved said of the volunteer effort, “It was the best thing that my son ever did in his life.”

New Orleans: Students Got Real Education

By supporting workers who were being brutalized by capitalism and racism in New Orleans, Clara Barton students got a powerful lesson in class struggle. This was real education. It’s also the kind of learning that the New York City Department of Education (DoE) doesn’t want them to get.

Since then, the principal and his lackeys have insisted that any activities involving teachers and students outside of the school represent a violation of a chancellor’s regulation — unless approved in advance by the principal. As we’ve pointed out, this ridiculous policy could never be put forward in a more affluent or elite school; it was a racist insult to the entire Clara Barton community. As predicted in CHALLENGE (6/22), the despicable, racist principal lived down to his reputation. The day after the term ended, two PLP teachers — both among the most effective and committed in the school — received a “U” rating, for “unsatisfactory.”

The response in the building was immediate. About 40 teachers attended an emergency union meeting called the next day. After a discussion ranging from the imminent excessing and Forman’s relentless harassment, the teachers endorsed a resolution demanding that the principal remove the U ratings. They also considered withdrawing their contributions from a union-sponsored fund to show that they were dissatisfied with our union leadership’s weak response to this attack. Finally, it was proposed that the staff rate the principal. There is no question that he would get a U!

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Workers’ Support for Murder Victim Exposes Rulers’ Use of Racist Cops

PHILADELPHIA, PA, June 23 — Albert D. “Audi” Purnell was murdered by a racist Philadelphia cop. Hospital workers here are supporting their co-worker Albert Purnell, Sr., demanding justice for his murdered son. PLP members and friends are actively involved in this struggle. On June 15, we took part in a march to the office of District Attorney Seth Williams to demand that this racist cop be brought to court. On June 23, we attended a meeting of the Philadelphia City Council where Audi’s parents demanded justice for their murdered son. But to the racist Philadelphia cops he was nothing more than a black animal that they could slaughter at will.

When we first started talking to co-workers about this racist murder we ran into some cynicism. Some responded “Why would the police murder him?” What was he doing?” We decided to continue talking with these workers patiently. As more of the details of the murder are coming out, the cynicism of these workers is starting to soften.

Many who are black are under pressure from crime in their neighborhoods. They want to believe that the police will deal with this problem if they are given a free hand. This is the basis of support for Mayor Nutter’s “stop-and-frisk” policy. This idea that the role of the police is to protect workers from crime is an illusion.

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‘Jobs, Yes! Deportations, No!’ Workers Fight Fascist Attack on Immigrants

NEW YORK CITY, July 1 — The most important task for the world’s working class is rebuilding the international communist movement, learning from past successes and failures and advancing the struggle for workers’ power. Crucial to this process is fighting racism and all racist divisions within the working class. We must understand global immigration in this context.

Workers migrate for many reasons: work, hunger, misery, war, repression and persecution. The world is the marketplace where international wage slaves look for work, regardless of capitalist-imposed borders. The world’s capitalists exploit the working class in part based on immigrants, both outside and inside their so-called borders. The lower the wages and the worse the situation for immigrant workers, the better capitalists can create the conditions to exploit the whole working class while building racist ideology and divisions. We must understand how capitalism works, unite across “borders” and fight for our class worldwide.

Bosses Spread Anti-Immigrant Lies

Within capitalist “nations,” the bosses super-exploit undocumented workers, reaping huge profits. Meanwhile, their government and media system blame undocumented immigrants for “stealing” jobs from “Americans”; “taking services away” from “law-abiding citizens”; “committing crime”; “ruining neighborhoods”; and being “terrorists.” These statements are based on racist lies and myths that foster a climate of racist hate and division that masks the nature of capitalist exploitation and builds a base for ruling-class-led fascism.

In the U.S. there are a rash of new anti-immigrant laws, often passed in states with the highest immigration rates, like Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Arizona and Utah. The latest law, enacted in Alabama:

• Requires public schools to check students’ immigration status using birth certificates or sworn affidavits;

• Bans undocumented immigrants from attending state colleges;

• Makes it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants;

• Makes it illegal for citizens and documented immigrants to transport or shelter undocumented immigrants; and,

• Makes it a crime to hire undocumented immigrants and forces employers to use E-Verify, a so-called “voluntary” program run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to verify a worker’s immigration status.

Meanwhile Texas Representative Lamar Smith has introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to make the use of E-Verify at workplaces federal law, thus mandatory. (E-Verify is a faulty system with a high error rate, causing many documented workers to be either fired or refused employment.)

Obama Expands Bush Program

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Obama’s Boeing Buddies, Union Hacks Pave Way for Sellout

SEATTLE, June 28 — The court case between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists (IAM) kicked off earlier this month with a judge hearing Boeing’s request to have the IAM’s complaint thrown out. The latter is accusing Boeing of moving part of its 787 aircraft production to a non-union plant in South Carolina in order to punish the union for its 2008 strike. Boeing has denied the charges and wants the case dismissed.

However, the fact that Boeing’s move to South Carolina was made to punish its workers is undeniable. And the fact that Boeing has chosen South Carolina reveals the racism of the company’s move. The state’s history of centuries of racism as a union-busting “right-to-work” area has kept wages much lower than in Washington State and enables the racist bosses to use it as a club against white and black workers in Seattle.

In 2010, Boeing CEO Jim Albaugh told the Seattle Times (4/22/10) that preventing strikes was the key factor in deciding to move to South Carolina. A 2009 conference call with then Boeing CEO Jim McNerney had the company again stating that the move was made to prevent “regular strikes.” More recently Boeing’s chief counsel told a Senate committee hearing that the move was undertaken to prevent further strikes. (LA Times, 6/26/11).

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